[markshepard]

So basically this is good if you need the flexibility of Cloud based apps like Dropbox or Box with the convenience of data ownership and storage.

It is interesting to see that folks can "replace" dropbox with ftp/ssh/rsync/webdav etc. But the strength of dropbox or similar solution (self-hosted or otherwise) is the consumability model (music transcoded and streamed, Photos resized and presented as slideshows, controlled share support). With more and more access to the data coming from mobile clients, the differentiation of these services from those "traditional access services" are their support for new mobile clients/OSes.

[s_henry_paulson]

Out of every person I have ever met that uses Dropbox, I don't know of a single person that cares about music encoding or picture resizing.

[markshepard]

I am assuming you have not met all the users of Dropbox then? Clearly there are people (like me) who do care about consuming the data other than just downloading them as raw files.

[dmd]

raises hand I love Dropbox's media-presentation features. Without them I'd probably use something else.

[minm]

Are you saying the usability of these apps don't matter. Atleast I care about the slideshows. Music playing is very rudimentary in dropbox. Tonido scores better when it Comes to music -plays flac.